


Steal My Heart and Tell Me Lies

by CaughtFeelings



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Lila Rossi Lies, Minor Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22946581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaughtFeelings/pseuds/CaughtFeelings
Summary: Love is a lie, and the way you win at romance is by successfully conning someone into treating you the way you deserve. Lila has finally found a devastatingly handsome, obscenely rich trophy husband, and now that he's paid for in full, he's under strict instructions to propose tonight. Unfortunately for her, Paris has a brand new supervillian, and an ancient man with arcane secrets has identified two brave, deserving heroes to stand against him, regardless of whatever other plans these heroes might have had for their evening.This is not a story about Ladybug and Chat Noir. This is a story about Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste's  very long trips to the bathroom, and what happened during and as a result of the time they were away. Sometimes, love changes you. And sometimes, the only thing terrible people deserve is each other.
Relationships: Félix Graham de Vanily/Lila Rossi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

Lila Rossi floated through the embassy like a fairy princess, smiling graciously at the bustle of staff and visitors and appreciating the way that the lilac dress- a _Gabriel_ original- whispered about her in a cloud of crepe.

“Someone’s happy,” Ambassador Rossi commented, proud and bemused. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“Not yet,” Lila said, smiling demurely as she selected a white rose from a bouquet laid out for an Italian bride about to make her way to City Hall to be married to her French groom. She wouldn’t notice if one of the lavish arrangements laid out had only forty-nine blooms instead of the full fifty. “But I’ll tell you as soon as it’s official!”

“Not even a hint for your mother?” Ambassador Rossi teased. “Even if it’s not official yet? You clearly want to tell someone.”

Lila’s smile became a little bit more conspiratorial, and her voice dropped as she leaned towards her mother. “Nothing concrete yet,” she murmured, “but I think it’s going to be one of the most important nights of my life. Maybe newsworthy? Worth a tip to Nadja, in any case.”

Ambassador Rossi touched her nose knowingly. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “And spare no expense with your hair, makeup, nails, anything you want. Image is everything, darling.”

Lila smiled and inhaled the delicate fragrance of the blossom that did not yet know it was dying, then sheared off most of the stem with a perfectly manicured nail and tucked the blossom behind her ear. In her reflection in the glass window, she looked as breathtakingly radiant as ever, but she fully intended to take advantage of her mother’s offer. She had never quite noticed how good she would look in white, and it was worth emphasizing, especially tonight.

* * *

Her prize picked her up at six in his spotless, black ( _it would be white, soon, with bells hanging from the bumpers_ ) limousine, the driver doing his best impression of a Tsurugi self-driving vehicle, and his smile was shy, infatuated, ( _whipped, how she liked him_ ) a little vacant, but always a gentleman. He opened the door for her, kissed her hand as he helped her into her seat, made polite small talk on the way to Le Grand Paris ( _where she would not be taking him upstairs, at least for a year or so_ ). Their table was subtly, exactly in the middle of the dining room, where each couple around them was slightly less beautiful than they were, and the candlelight lit them slightly less brightly.

He didn’t talk much, his gaze faraway, but she didn’t really care what he had to say, anyway. He was a model, after all, not a philosopher. There wasn’t a man on earth that could keep up with her brain, and so the best she could hope for was that they not hold her back.

“This venue is perfect,” Lila told him, and he nodded politely. “The architect designed it to model after Gusteau’s, which had won international awards until the owner and chef fell tragically in unrequited love with my mother; he wasted away, unable to put a heart he no longer had into the restaurant where he had met her. The place has been abandoned for twenty years. It’s beautifully, devastatingly sad. I’d show you pictures of the original, but they’re so humiliating to the owner it’d be cruel.”

“You’re right, it’s a shame,” he said quietly. “I’d almost rather he not have known what he would have been missing. Sometimes having just a taste of it, before it’s gone forever, is enough to ruin what you do have.”

Oh, she was going to have to break him of that bleeding heart. She shrugged. “He should have remembered his place. She’s the ambassador after all. Not-” she smiled, pleased with her newest trophy- “the professionally pretty son of one of the biggest names in fashion. There are thousands of restaurants out there, and chefs, no matter how famous, are just food service. They’re the fanciest of the help.”

He checked his pocket again, a nervous habit she would have to have trained out of him before he was officially hers. It was a clumsy tell, the kind she would have picked up or as a teenager, and she appreciated the feedback insight into his nerves, but the thought of sending him on embassy work with so little poker face was appalling. Gabriel had mentioned he had been poorly socialized, but there was a difference between trophy husbands and liabilities, and Lila was only interested in the former.

She took his other hand from where it rested on the table with both of hers and smiled brightly.

"With our connections and my mind, we're going to take Paris by storm," she cooed to him. “The world is ours. With you by my side, there's nothing that's not within reach." _Within her reach. He was there to look handsome and open doors for her. He wouldn't actually have any power of his own, of course._ And he knew it. There were manners but no enthusiasm in his smile.

The push notification to everyone's phones hit at the same time, stalling conversation as everyone took a moment to read. The shift in mood in the glamorous restaurant was immediate and dramatic.

 _Now, Hawkmoth?_ she thought, a little annoyed. _You can't wait one more night to play with your toys? I get it that they're paid in full, but this is my night, not yours._

"l have to go to the bathroom," he blurted, standing suddenly and breaking her sour mood.

_Aw, afraid of the boogeyman, are we? Coward. Stoneheart’s not going to harm us, but he’s just a vanguard. The next one, maybe, can be a little more mobile. Maybe a little more psychological? Maybe I can play with you a little before Hawkmoth gets what he wants._

She let no fraction of her annoyance break into her smile. There were photographers present, after all. "Oh, no!" she said, the perfect picture of sympathetic concern. “But we just got here! Are you not feeling well?”

"I'll be fine," he said, and his obvious discomfort made her smile. "I'll be right back."

"Okay," she said, and her voice dropped low, just a little sultry. "Just as long as you come back and keep me company, okay? I'm not letting you go tonight until I’m through with you."

Her nails dug into his hand briefly, and she let him go.

“Champagne, mademoiselle?” the waiter offered, and Lila didn’t care that the correct manners were to wait for her boyfriend to come back to the table, she drank anyway.

The waiter came back to refill her glass before he returned.

* * *

Chat Noir wasn't running away from Le Grand Paris, per se. There was nothing in it he could escape, anyway. But an old school friend from back in that experimental, beautiful year in lycee had been transformed into a golem, kidnapped another classmate, and was carrying her halfway across the city, and if he was secretly grateful to take the magic ring he had stumbled across in his green room and the sarcastic, stinky, wonderful little cat that had materialized when he tried it on for a spin, who could blame him?

He'd wanted to wait at least a day or so, or at least until it was properly dark, but the rampaging golem wasn't going to resolve himself, after all, and if any part of his boring, structured, joyless life was going to be interrupted, tonight was definitely a great place to start.

He'd deal with the consequences when he'd get back, he was sure, he thought, as he launched himself from the baton he was using to vault from rooftop to rooftop, and for one heart stopping moment, he was flying. But at least with all of the chaos of a supervillain attack, and a new superhero hopefully saving the day, at least his civilian self wouldn't be-

\- missed-

the baton slipped on the loose gravel rooftop, and the Chat Noir was in free fall.

* * *

There’s an unspoken code around women in bathrooms in bars: if there’s a woman crying alone in one of the stalls, as if she’s trapped and afraid to leave, it’s probably about a man. It wasn’t morally imperative to help, the way that it was to loan a fellow woman a tampon or pass toilet paper under a stall when it was out, but given the likelihood that every woman would have such a crisis at some point in their lives, Marinette never really felt like she had a choice. She didn’t know Mireille well, but she knew that she deserved better.

“Show me which table,” she murmured. Mireille sniffed, breathing deeply to calm herself, and pointed to a blond in a waistcoat, dress shirt, and slacks. He wasn’t wearing a fedora, but he didn’t have to.

“Okay.” Marinette said. “Take the back door. Your Uber should be waiting for you. If it’s not, keep walking straight to the Tom and Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie; it’s closed right now, but my parents are expecting a delivery. Ring the service door and say your name is Germaine. My parents will know you’re not really the delivery person and let you inside. I’ll handle things in here.”

“I’m sorry for causing you trouble,” Mireille said. “I really should be able to just tell him to leave me alone, but he’s not listening. The only way he would leave me alone in the first place was that I said I had to go to the bathroom, and then I’ve been stuck in here for twenty minutes; he’s waiting for me to come out.”

“It’s not your fault,” Marinette said. “Creeps like him are so common we have a procedure in place to handle them, even down to a bar safe word to communicate that you need help. I’ll handle him. You handle escaping.”

Mireille nodded, and Marinette left the bathroom, heading straight to blondie.

“It’s about time,” he snapped. “I’ve been here for twenty minutes. Did you have to slaughter and skin the dog we’re having for dinner tonight? You know what, I don’t even care. Get my date something fruity where she can’t taste the alcohol. I’ll have a beer.”

 _Thanks for the monologue,_ Marinette thought. _Mireille is probably home free by this point, and good riddance._

“I’m sorry,” she told him, “but the reason you didn’t see your date leave the bathroom is that she left the restaurant a half hour ago. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like for you to leave, as well; you aren’t welcome back.”

His general aloof surliness broke into a true scowl.

“I don’t know what kind of lies she told you,” he snapped, “but you’re stupid to believe them. For all you know, I’m a Nice Guy, not like whatever ogres females like you typically throw yourselves at.”

Marinette sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “And yet, you make comments like that, completely undermining the point you’re trying to make.”

She didn’t like the smile he gave her, or his elevator eyes on her body. “Here,” he said, grabbing her wrist and standing up, closer than was polite. “Let me show you.”

She froze.

“Let go of my wrist,” she said, calmly.

“I was told I was going to go on a blind date with a cute, petite, Oriental lady,” he said, his fingers tightening on her wrist. “Sit down.”

Marinette sighed, and met his eyes.

“I’m going to give you one more chance to be the nice guy that you’re so proud of being,” she said. “Now. Let go of my wrist.”

“This is the thing I don’t understand about gold-digging bitches like you,” he said. “You finally have a chance for someone with class to take you out, and you insist on making a scene. I’m going to show you the best night of your life, and you’re going to shut up and enjoy it.”

Marinette flashed him her best customer-service smile, and he relaxed, just enough.

The pointer and middle finger of her left hand drove into his left wrist, catching him at the flexor tendons, which are not well designed to take a forceful impact across a small surface area. He released them immediately, howling in pain. Marinette was not tall enough to punch the man in the face directly, but when he turned his wrist towards his face to stare at the injured spot, the heel of her hand helped it along, so that he punched himself, hard, in the nose. The tears in his eyes blinded him to her sweeping leg, which knocked his legs out from under him and caused him to land, hard, on his tailbone.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured to Chris, as she bustled into the kitchen, “but I need to make myself scarce for the rest of the evening. “I had to pour an Angel Shot at Table 13. Officer Raincomprix is already on the way; just hold down the fort in the meantime.”

“Nora says I’m almost ready to start helping with those,” he said, flexing a bicep. “You don’t have to handle all of them yourself.”

Marinette smiled affectionately, and put a hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Trust me. This one would have read it as your trying to steal his girl. He needed to get shot down by a woman, and while I’m sure Nora would have loved to have been here, she does tend to scare away the customers that behave themselves. The next time there’s a bar fight about anything other than someone who doesn’t understand the word “no,” you can help.”

Chris grinned, picked up his tray, and headed out to the front of the house.

Out the service door, the Uber driver was still waiting; Marinette opened the passenger door, and stuck her head in. “Hey, it looks like my friend ended up going to my parents’ bakery. That’s okay, I’ll still pay you.”

The elderly Chinese man smiled. “That’s all right,” he said. “Cheng Shifu has kept me posted as the situation developed. Mireille is already safe, and I have a gift for you in thanks.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Marinette said, stepping back as if to go.

He extended to her a dark, weathered-looking box with a red insignia on top. “Please. At least find out what it is?”

* * *

Chat Noir was going to have been a hero for precisely eleven minutes and forty-three seconds, and then he was going to be the sheltered house cat that became roadkill the instant he slipped out of the house, and that sucked.

The concrete below was rushing towards him for too fast for him to get his bearings, and there was no time to do the physics equations as he would need to, so he braced-

\- and the flash of red that body slammed him, gripping him with an arm and both legs, caught him inches from the ground, and he was flying again.

“Aren't cats supposed to land on their feet?" she teased, as her yo-yo effortlessly released, grappled, and tensed again, and Chat Noir wasn't sure if it was the adrenalin or the surprise, but his mouth said "How could I, when you've swept me off them?" before his brain could catch up. Her laughter was joy and freedom and adventure, and a rescue when he was falling.

When he told her, “Be careful, or I'll fall for you," he meant it.

* * *

The man on the floor of the Wang Cheng's restaurant wasn't physically stunned, per se, just shocked.

And he definitely wasn't attracted to that bartender.


	2. Chapter 2

Maybe it was because daily life went right out the window the instant the little red goddess popped out of the box, but being Ladybug put a more legendary, citywide scope on Marinette's worldview, and suddenly the protection she had been offering at her uncle's bar seemed small scale. There weren't any rules, and the giant head made out of butterflies might have scared her as a child, but she had seen the Wizard of Oz and could recognize the petty and small person behind the supervillainous curtain. Hawkmoth might have magical special effects, but she met someone who talked a bigger game than he did earlier that night, and left him on the floor of her uncle's bar with a nosebleed.

“LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR, GIVE ME YOUR MIRACULOUSES RIGHT NOW,” the head commanded, as if demanding to speak to a manager.

She hummed. "How about... no?"

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NO,” it roared, and defying it felt like destiny.

"I mean, _ no, _ " she said a little louder, but still calm. "Did I stutter?"

Behind her, her partner muttered “we can  _ do  _ that?”, and her resolve was set. She wasn’t going to defy this anthropomorphic cloud of butterflies because he was the avatar of everyone who had ever tried to bully themselves into more power than . She was going to do it for the people who didn’t know they could.

It helped that this one was cute.

* * *

Marlena’s kitchen was kept busy enough that she didn’t often venture into the front of the house during operating hours, but the wait staff had been gossiping animatedly enough about table 56, which was still on its soup course an hour after being seated, that her curiosity had gotten the better of her.

The two empty champagne bottles on her table spoke to why they were still working on the soups; it looked like the young woman in the beautiful lilac dress and pearl-festooned updo was going to need something greasier to balance her alcohol intake for the evening.

“Someone should go say something to her,” she murmured to Jean-Claude, as he brought her a ticket for table 42. “This is not a bar. Does Mademoiselle know that she’s expected to order an entree with her beverages?”

“She does, and she has,” Jean-Baptiste said, with a sad shake of his head. “But no one has seen her date since he first arrived, and I’m not going to order their entree fired until we at least know if he’s still in the building.”

“She’s been seated for an hour!” Marlene murmured incredulously. “He’s been gone this whole time?”

Jean-Marc sighed sadly. “I have requested every men’s room in the hotel checked. Monsieur is nowhere to be found. I would bet my tips for the evening at a 1:1 ratio that he will not return, but no one will take me up on the offer.”

“Someone should say something,” Marlena said, frowning. “She’s Alya’s age, still a baby. Do you think she realizes he’s left?”

“Perhaps. But she will not acknowledge it. Every time someone tries, she snaps some lie at us or another and orders another glass of champagne. The bottles are from when she says she does not want to see our faces until we are bringing her food; to buy us some time until another waiter can be freed up to serve her. We’ve realized we’re going to have to rotate through everyone; she even had a problem with Sam, and  _ everyone _ likes Sam.”

Under the brilliant chandelier the room was laid out to treat like a spotlight, the young lady took out her phone, and frowned into it. She typed something, then set it, face up, on the table. She glanced toward the bathrooms, pursing her lips together and squinting her eyes slightly, then sighed and downed the rest of her fourth glass of champagne.

Marlena sighed sympathetically. “Poor dear. You’re better off without him. I think it’s time to send you an amuse bouche that’ll take the edge off all that alcohol- maybe something with nutella.”

* * *

Ladybug was possibly the most badass person Chat Nor had ever met, and he had been an Olympic fencer for a few years. So when the press started to arrive, and she grabbed his wrist and murmured "come with me," he followed without question. They were going to take down the supervillain in his lair. They were going to go have another adventure. They were going to-

\- find the nearest roof with privacy from the camera so Ladyby could start shaking and laughing hysterically.

_ Okay. I'm not sure what's going on, but I guess it's my turn to protect you. _

With an odd grace like he had been practicing for years, he collapsed his baton, sheathed it at the small of his back, and was at her side in an instant.

“Are you okay?” he asked, worried, as she gasped for air around her mirth.

"I am AMAZING!" she whooped, and he began to laugh with her.

"Yes, you were,” he agreed. “That was masterful. Is this normal for you?"

"Absolutely not! I’m a baker by morning and a bartender at night. I love my family and it's the family business, but there’s definitely customers that I’d love to unload on like that and customer service doesn’t let me. I’m not speaking for a local bakery, now, I’m speaking for Paris, so there’s no reason to hold back. I almost feel sorry for that guy. He had a whole dramatic introduction like he was setting himself up to be this badass Bond villain and I just gave him five years of "Okay, boomer" to the face. I just hope we get another villain soon- this one was a good warm up, but I’m already itching to try it again, and I’d love to get to know you better.”

"Sending out another villain, I can’t help with, but I can definitely give you my number,” he asked, because giving an amazing woman his phone number felt like the most natural thing in the world. “Plagg, claws in.”

The green light dissolved his super suit, and let him fish his cell phone out of his pocket, but when he looked up, her eyes had blown wide, her hands over her mouth.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re Adrien Agreste. I know you.”

_ Damn. Everybody does. Did I kill our dynamic? Should I have done this? _

“Do I know you?” he asked, hesitant.  _ Anybody but Lila. I’ll even take Chloé, just not Lila, Plagg, I’m begging you. _

“Maybe?” she asked, a little shy. “We went to school together for a few weeks, years ago, but I’m not famous. Tikki, spots off.”

He studied her face as the mask melted off it, and if this was what Plagg gave him when he asked nicely, he was giving that cat everything he asked for as long as he lived.

“Marinette?” he breathed. “Oh my gosh, is that you?”

“I’m sorry I never returned your umbrella,” she said, all of the Ladybug confidence gone, but the second half of it, she said directly into his chest, because he had bundled her into a hug that smooshed her face against him, his arms wrapped tightly around her and his cheek resting on her forehead.

“Keep it,” he said, and it broke his heart, because he wanted nothing more than to ask to kiss her, but he couldn’t even ask, because he was spoken for. His lycee crush, back again, tonight of all nights? There was an engagement ring in his pocket, and his fiancee-to-be was waiting for him back at the hotel. Was this his last breath of freedom before the rest of his life in structure and duty?

_ How about, no? _

_ She doesn’t have to like me back. We don’t have to ever see each other again, after tonight, as badly as I want to. But this is destiny. _

He took a deep breath.

“Can I borrow some of that Ladybug confidence?” he asked, hesitant. “Can you be my moral support while I make a phone call?”

* * *

“He’s not coming back, you know.”

Lila looked up from her sixth glass of champagne at Chloé Bourgeois, who had never come to this restaurant with a date, but was still continuing to visit it with her family like she was a fourteen year old being taken out on a special treat for her birthday.

“Of course he is!” Lila said, slamming her glass down on the table. Even despite the tablecloth, the delicate glass shattered with the force. Clearly it wasn’t very well made, and the tablecloth was spotted delicately with antique white stains; it probably hadn’t been washed since the last person who had eaten here, and clearly they were a lush. “He’s absolutely smitten with me. He’s been courting me for years. We’re Paris’s it couple, any gossip magazine would tell you that. His father even told me he’s proposing tonight.”

Chloé sat, with a softness that was alien on her face; almost like pity. “Lila. He left for the bathroom two hours ago. Jean-Francois was planning on sending someone to clear your table and set it up for the next couple fifteen minutes ago, and instead you’ve broken him, he’s wearing a hole in the floor pacing, trying to decide which table to clear out early to make sure that we have a fallback table to offer the nice couple that were expecting yours.”

“The next couple can deal with it,” Lila sniffed. “It’s rude to rush a paying customer out before they’re ready to go. Speaking of, spare the floor and have Jean-Luc bring me another glass of champagne and pick up this mess. This tablecloth is filthy.”

Chloé sighed, taking Lila’s hand and looking at her with an odd gravity. “I’m telling you this as a friend, and because if you keep it up, you’re going to embarrass both yourself and the restaurant,” she said. “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody. You’re one of the few people from school who I could tolerate, and I owe you. I know Adrien. I grew up with him, he’s practically a brother to me.  _ He’s not coming back. _ Take the lift up to the rooms, and a back entrance; you can still leave quietly and with as few people recognizing you as possible, which is a minor miracle, since you’ve been making a scene.”

“Has he called you?” Lila asked. He would have had no reason to, but she was starting, just a little, to worry.

“No,” Chloé said, tracing the edges of Lila’s fingernails in a soothing motion, “and I would have absolutely laid into him if he had, telling him to come back and stop embarrassing you. I’ve called him myself. He’s not answering. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, and he’s doing it anyway, which means  _ he’s not coming back. _ ”

Lila snatched her hand back from Chloé, and if it hadn’t been perfectly manicured, she would have slapped her. “If he hasn’t told you he’s not coming back, he’s coming back,” she snapped. “I’m the love of his life. He’s devoted to me.”

Chloé sighed. “Well, at least I’m going to get this filthy table cleaned up,” she said. “Go move to the bar for now, I’ll call someone who’s paid to be here to lay out a new place setting.”

“It’s about time,” Lila said, eyeing the broken glass with disdain. “I should never have been sat at a table with a stained tablecloth and broken glass anyway. What is this, the remnants of a vase or something? Honestly, I would have thought Le Grand Paris had a nicer restaurant than this. It’s like a mall cafeteria.”

The ground rolled like the deck of a small boat when Lila stood, and she was confused. This was Le Grand Paris, not a yacht, and yachts don’t move like this.

“Here, hold on to me,” Chloé said, taking Lila’s hand and helping her stabilize. She had no trouble walking on the dangerously moving ground. “Let’s get you over to the bar.”

“This is a terrible restaurant,” Lila told Chloé conversationally, and Chloé’s mouth was set in a line for a moment at the insult, before schooling her face to an emotion more appropriate to show a customer. She laughed at the joke. Lila was so funny.

“It really is,” she agreed. “My mom keeps threatening to have everyone working here fired.”

“They should be!” Lila said, choosing a bar stool and settling in, before putting on a winning smile. “Bartender? I’ll have another glass of champagne.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” the bartender said, “but champagne is reserved for table service.”

“You’d make the exception if you knew who I was,” Lila huffed, and Chloé rolled her eyes as if she wouldn’t notice, but she did, and she would ruin the other girl for this, friendship or not. This restaurant didn’t deserve half its reputation. “Fine. I’ll have a Black Rose. Maybe a little heavier on the vermouth than you would have otherwise. I’m getting engaged tonight.”


End file.
